


how i have loved you, how i have lost you

by kaermorons



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, The Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-08
Updated: 2019-12-08
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:41:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21723916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaermorons/pseuds/kaermorons
Summary: Crowley has been mourning a loss before he even really lost anything. The pain manifested itself physically, and he carried it for thousands of years. Aziraphale held him even as he shook apart in grief.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 110





	how i have loved you, how i have lost you

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks to @PeturbingPrism on here for beta!

Crowley almost wished it could go back to how it was, at the beginning, when the angel didn’t know he was teasing him. Those were the stolen moments, and he coveted them. He remembered them all clear as day, for the sheer absence of heartache was absent from each memory of the kind.

The others, however.

Let’s start again, in Golgotha. Time had just started going off of defined numbers, and this was the end of that holy initiator. This was the first moment of heartache, twisting and churning in his gut, on his face, certainly in his eyes. Crowley, ever dramatic, had been just a step behind the angel, and had seen that holy profile for just a moment: downcast eyes, worry lines that hadn’t yet sunk in but had always been there, a tightness to his face that only grew more taut with every nail into a cross, into a man who by all means did not deserve this sentence. Crowley remembered the hushed words spoken in the brief silences between cries of pain, shouts of effort, chatter of onlookers.

“Be kind to each other.”

This moment was different. There was no easy banter back and forth, no expected push-pull of temptation and attempts at forgiveness. This one was different, just like he thought at the Beginning, just the two of them on a wall of an empty garden, full of life but lacking all the same. Try as he might, Crowley almost would have done better as a demon to have never heard those words at all. They were spoken with such a pained reverence. The word of the Almighty, much too powerful to be spoken on the lips of a mere man – just look at what they’d done when someone had tried. Even now, this holy creature, this blessed figure, bearing witness to such cruelty, could only whisper this command from God as a secret. Crowley felt the words slither and twist around his head, trapped in his headscarf like a bloody wasp. A knife he never knew had slipped its way between his ribs slowly, slowly began to turn, prying him open year by year, as if his torso played lock to some torturous key.

And Crowley, ever the deflector, one to scurry away from any and all conflict, had curled his nose up as if smelling something foul. “That’ll do it.” The words felt hollow and somber, the same way he’d recognize in the tolls of bells throughout the 14th century. His blood rushed around his body, compelled by some manic heartbeat he was sure the angel could hear. They didn’t speak of it.

That evening, long after the soldiers and the poor man’s mother had departed, he stood there with the angel in the chilling desert, bereft of sun. The horizon just made out a silhouette in the distance, a mockery of the profile burned in his skull. It had been four thousand years, and he realized with a jolt that he may never get to see his angel like this again. He bore witness upon the angel, who bore witness upon the cruelest act of humanity against Heaven. Crowley counted every tear. They dropped in him, filling up a weight in his chest, drip, drip, drip.

“You alright?” Crowley croaked, still in the dark. The Son of God had long died.

The angel, suddenly pulled from his scattered thoughts, made some of panicked noise. “Goodness, it’s difficult to love them in these moments.” He’d given a shrill, tinny laugh, the kind a young child would make after a brutal injury. Crowley sensed some relief, in not detecting doubt.

“Bastards, the lot of 'em,” Crowley cursed to distract bring Aziraphale from his distraught mood. “I wager it’s all downhill from here. Bet our side wouldn’t mess up sending a kid up topside, now.”

“That’s not to be joked about. The man is still warm.” And that, that caring, that empathy for a man he’d hardly spoken to. The flaming sword in his side only twisted, degree by excruciating degree.

Crowley hardly remembered the details of what had happened after that, because the angel was right pissed at him, and disappeared into thin air, leaving behind the smell of earth after a rainstorm, the sound of a hand passing atop a bell, and an emptiness in Crowley that fought centuries to fill.

He wept that night, in the still-warm-heat of a nearby cave. The wind covered his howls of pain, as agony tore through his chest the same as when he’d first Fallen. His hands shook and his vision blurred, his whole body on fire. He clutched at his side, half-expecting to see a hilt sticking out of him, for all this trouble. Yet there was nothing. He raised his gaze to the sky, and he almost spoke.

The next handful of times went about the same. Quiet words shared side-by-side across history, always with the angel despairing for something the humans were doing against God’s will, probably. Crowley could never avoid these meetings. He was drawn to the angel throughout time, blessed with his presence and cursed with his absence.

He found himself starting to grieve the moments before they’d even ended. A lull in the conversation dug the knife in deeper. Aziraphale’s eyes flitting to a door or window. Some shout from outside interrupting the benediction of his company. Crowley was not at war with himself for being selfish. It was in his nature, as a low beast, to look out for himself.

Then came the other thoughts. Best not enjoy today’s walk through St. James, you’ll just be sobbing about it into another bottle of wine later on. “Good morning, angel.” _I miss you, I grieve you, don’t go._ The pleas all halt along his tongue within moments of their greeting. Bless these spectacles for hiding his expression.

The parting pain did not ebb. This must be some bespoke Hell he had to endure. Some test from the Almighty. He did not want to be kind, as his angel would call him. He did not want to be nice. Those were the commands of the Almighty, and he didn’t have a very great track record with those, by nature.

He remembered a small child he’d seen silently crying on the side of the bazaar. A mess of white-gold hair sat atop their head, face smudged with dirt and a large cut on their hand. Crowley had been drawn to their pain, as would any occult entity.

“Child, can you speak?” The poor thing hiccuped, and Crowley’s insides twisted. “Let me see.” The child held out their dirty, bloody hand. “Look at that. I’m sure that hurts. Where’d that happen?” He gently prods, distracting them from his healing. With their other hand, the child points at a stall. A mean-looking woman brandishing some leather belt like a whip stood glaring at people in the bazaar. “Well let’s make sure that doesn’t happen again, hm?” Crowley looked down at the small hand in his, perfectly clean and healed. The child made a small noise of confusion and babbled excitedly at him. “I know, I know.” He hoists the child on his hip and walks over to the stall.

“I should like to buy in private.” He says, and is allowed into the back of the stall. The shopkeeper follows them and he whispers, “Sleep,” to the child, before removing his veil and showing his eyes.

“You are cruel no longer. You shall strive toward compassion. You will love and receive love you don’t deserve. You shall honor children. You will remember my eyes should you not.”

That evening, with the energy drained of him, he slept for the first time in five thousand years. It was the first time he had not thought of the angel and grieved.

And then.

The world had ended. As he stood in the flames of his angel’s bookshop, he had screamed and cursed in anger. He had blamed everyone because he had spent six millennia blaming himself. The grief all flooded back to him at once, compounded by the years. “Be kind to each other,” in a hushed voice screamed at the top of his lungs.

When he saw his angel appear in that pub, his first thought came unbidden to him, “Do not be afraid.”

This moment ripped an open wound in Crowley’s chest, centuries upon centuries of growing strong, flesh warped over the sword in his side. This was an axe of hope that split him into pieces. Later, as he screamed towards the M25, towards the wall of infernal flames, he knew he could not die a death any further than the one hope had dealt him.

“Come up with something or I’ll, I’ll…” the incredulous look shared between the two, so soon after Crowley was able to get him back. He was already grieving, again. A reflex honed over thousands of years, saying goodbye in the moment of hello, “I’ll never talk to you again.”

And oh, how that just put another knife in his chest, closer now to that crippled, burnt heart of his. His very soul screamed as he stopped time itself, for his angel, for just the chance to hear him say another word.

Later, at a bus stop. He felt entirely unseen. Passing a bottle back and forth on a bench, Crowley mourned quietly. This moment will end. This moment will pass. Every “angel” he endeared may as well have been to a gravestone, should ethereal beings be keen on those whatsoever.

Later, at his flat. He felt that unending guilt and shame and loss bubble up within him once more, and he barely made it to the loo, barely concealed his wounded, stabbed heart and soul, before the floodgates opened. What a day he had endured, to lose and to find and to lose again. His panic wrapped a flaming coil around his body and he shook, he shook until he was crumbled into sand beneath their feet like on that day nearly two thousand years ago. He wrapped himself up in dark power just to be able to stand. He looked wrecked. A widow of a marriage never had. An orphan of a Mother too unforgiving to reclaim. He lifted the sigils over the door, muting his agony, and rejoined his angel, nearly misspeaking a “goodbye” instead of a “hey”.

Later, at the Ritz. Crowley didn’t eat, because he never ate when his angel did. He would rather memorize every part of this moment, an infinite memory bank loading up with data. How his angel sighed around a fork that didn’t remotely deserve to be anywhere near that mouth. How his voice trembled on the words, “To the world,” the ring of their glasses, sharp and miraculous. And really, their toast wasn’t incorrect. Aziraphale had done this all for the sake of this world. Crowley had done all this for the sake of his world. His world was just a bit smaller in scope: wrapped in aged yet impeccably maintained cloth, barely sun kissed, and unendingly kind to every creature he saw. Crowley mourned the memory as it unfolded, covering his mind like a death shroud.

There was never a chance for him to repress his feelings for his angel as they went back to the bookshop. He had felt the wave beginning to swell back in Berkeley Square, and it was cresting above him, a thousand times taller than he’d felt it before.

Aziraphale had been in the middle of speaking when Crowley stood, all the blood draining from his face as a tremor built, building in his hands. “Crowley?” He asked, but the demon was far away in his panic, swept out by the current to a icy, choppy sea.

He could not hide now. He was too exhausted to snap himself to his flat, to his empty garden. He was too disoriented to even find the door to the street. The edges of his vision, curse his eyes, were darkening and tunneling, and they filled with tears that stung like sand two thousand years old. He wasn’t aware of the big, gulping breaths he was needlessly taking, just as he wasn’t aware of being lowered gently to the ground. Tears spilled down his face and he let out an anguished wail of sorrow for the loss of the being just in front of him. Darkness closed around him like a familiar kind of torture, one that had kept him company all these years. His head dropped and was fully consumed by the pain once more.

He must have said something in his inane babble of grief; his angel wouldn’t have looked so affronted and shocked. There was a blinding light as Aziraphale shed tears on the rug below them. Hands, endlessly warm and grounding, held his face tenderly, full of care and concern. Through manic eyes, Crowley could see. “Please, let me show you.” The angel pled, pressing his aura gently against Crowley’s. It was a familiar feeling to submit to his angel’s wants, but a new feeling to be shown an angelic vision like this.

Time flew backwards at the speed of light, a dizzying haze of experience. Crowley could feel that gracious love of humanity that normally radiated off of Aziraphale every day, except now that regular trickle had become a tidal wave, a swallowing, endless deluge.

 _He is so different._ Aziraphale’s voice rang through, a memory of a thought. _How fearless of an Angel of the Lord can a serpent be? Better keep an eye on this one._

Thousands of years sped through Crowley’s eyes, heat and chill passing in summers and winters. Things skidded to a stop at Golgotha, 33 AD.

Through Aziraphale’s eyes, he could see himself, how clear his grief and misery was that day. Through the sunset, and as the desert grew cold, Aziraphale could always, always feel that pain. When he’d skipped up to Heaven to notify his superiors of the death of God’s child, he was met with disappointment, derision. No wonder Aziraphale spent so much time on Earth. When he’d skipped back, he was thinking about taking Crowley up on a drink or a shared meal. Instead, he was met with a rough, piercing wail on the wind. _Oh no._ Aziraphale took a jolting step toward a cave system, feeling the divine pull to comfort, heal, ease. But he recognized that pain. It was a loneliness he had suffered through, quietly, for over four thousand years.

Aziraphale stayed dead still in the desert that night, until the cries of pain ceased. In fear, he slipped into the ether, and shed his tears in private, hidden from the world and hidden from the one being who could understand him.

Another memory surged forward, in a snap. Rome. Crowley always kept such a steady, intense stare fixed upon him, and if Aziraphale squirmed and blushed under the attention, it could be written off as nervousness to being in close proximity to his adversary. “D’you think you’ll ever settle down around here?” Crowley asks. “Buy a house instead of just stealing away moments here and there?”

“I do think it’d be a nice thing to have a base of operations.” Aziraphale treads carefully, trying to remain professional. “It’s rather difficult to keep many things on my person, especially in a toga.” Crowley gives a smirk.

“Gathering material goods, now, angel?” His tease spurred a long conversation about morality over objects. When the conversation lulled and ended, Aziraphale caught sight of a surprised sadness on Crowley’s expression, hidden partially by those infernal spectacles. “See you around, then.”

“Hope we don’t.” Aziraphale said haughtily. It wouldn’t do to be caught around the demon. Crowley’s expression hardened, unreadable.

That night, Aziraphale thought he heard cries on the wind once more.

So many memories flitted past him, each meeting seeing, each meeting more knowing than the last. Crowley, back in the bookshop, just felt exhausted, too tired to feel mortified over the entire ordeal.

Aziraphale stopped paging through his memories to land rather hesitantly on a scene of a Syrian bazaar, 11th century by the looks of it. There was a stinging pain on his hand, inflicted because he’d allowed a human to hurt him so. Aziraphale, a corporation of infinite shapes and forms, was curious about children, so rather than spend time with one, he decided to become one. The woman who had slashed at his hand almost received a righteous smiting then and there, but Aziraphale felt afraid, felt alone.

He was sniffling in a nearby alley when a black-veiled woman approached him, tutting and asking to see the hand. Aziraphale almost gave up the act as he realized Crowley was healing his corporation using his demonic power. He’d be killed if someone caught him like this. A quick scan of the surrounding area told him there was no demonic presence. Yet Crowley had not recognized him, as this child. Aziraphale could not bring himself to be affronted at being held on a hip like a load of shopping. Crowley was warm, Crowley had healed him. Crowley was cursing the woman who had hurt him, Crowley was protecting him and didn’t even know who he was.

Aziraphale held lots of clarity to that memory, sharp as day. He must have thought about that moment a lot.

Things flashed forward once more to the hours after the failed Apocalypse, seeing Crowley’s flat for the first time. Of course he sensed the magicked runes and protective measures Crowley had thrown up in the bathroom. That didn’t dull the sharp ache in his heart that told him that he knew what was happening. Crowley’s crash, a frequent cycle in their friendship, in their relationship. Aziraphale wanted nothing more than to go and comfort him in that moment, but knew they weren’t out of hot water yet.

The memories faded away gently, leaving a stark chill without Aziraphale’s aura inside of him. Crowley blinked his eyes several times, as they had clouded with tears again. He felt embarrassed, ashamed. “You pity me.” He croaked.

“Never.” His angel affirmed. “Never would I dash my respect, my love for you, for knowing your pain.” Crowley was held fast against a chest that held a heart too good for this world.

“‘M pathetic, is all.” He mumbled softly. Aziraphale shook his head.

“I don’t believe you see yourself as I do. Shall I show you again, every memory of every kingdom we shared?” The poetry of Aziraphale’s words soothed the trembling in his hands. Perhaps is was those hands, steady and firm, against his back, holding him together like a broken vase. “I want you to know how deeply I care for you. You do not have to suffer this pain alone. Our side. We’re on our side.” Crowley had been waiting hundreds of years to hear that from his angel.

“I...this is all I’ve wanted. Why does it hurt?” Crowley says.

“I’m not sure. But I can promise you, from now until eternity, until the mountains are gone, you will never be alone.”

Crowley thinks that’s a pretty good consolation.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Find me on tumblr under this same name for more Crowley screaming.


End file.
